7 Challenges And Solutions For Convenience Store Management
The convenience store business is growing and is likely to gradually replace traditional grocery stores with modern shopping models and convenient services. It is not wrong to say that convenience stores are the future of retail.
However, to gain a competitive advantage in the convenience store war, businesses need to know how to effectively manage and have a reasonable business strategy to bring huge profits to their stores.
Effective management of convenience stores is important to gain profitability
So what difficulties and challenges do managers often face when managing convenience stores? Let's find out with FieldCheck in the following article. And we'll also give you helpful suggestions for running this retail model successfully.
1. Wide Range of Goods to Classify and Inspect
One advantage of convenience stores is the variety of items, from general consumer products to personal care tools, dry food, food, and drink. With such a large number of goods, importing and exporting warehouses, inventory control, and preservation are prone to many errors.
Not only that, but an item also has various types, sizes, colors, and storage environments. That is why many retailers, especially in stores that still apply traditional methods, always face difficulties sorting and classifying goods. And these have a significant impact on the operational efficiency as well as the revenue of the store.
See more: Steps And Tips To Use Store Inventory Management System
Solution
- Using warehouse management software
Most convenience stores today have equipped themselves with management software to detect errors and losses and improve customer experience. Some names can be mentioned, such as kiotviet.vn, sapo.vn, pos365, to name but a few.
- Sorting goods according to FIFO
This principle means "first in, first out." Accordingly, the store owner should put new items inside and old goods outside and prioritize exporting inventory items first. It is a scientific method to help you easily find goods in stock while ensuring the best shelf life of the product.
- Managing product by SKU
For products with barcodes, you need to use the barcode scanner to read the product's details on the sales screen. But what about products without barcodes?
In addition to creating barcodes and printing them out with a barcode printer, you can also manage goods by SKU code by giving each product an internal management code with letters and numbers according to the convention information that you want the product to represent.
SKU codes will help you distinguish items between different warehouses, limiting the loss of goods during the goods management process.
Store management tasks include merchandise classification and inventory inspection
2. Slow Billing at Peak Time
Many people prefer to shop at convenience stores because the number of customers entering and leaving these stores is not too high, and the payment process is also faster.
However, usually, the number of employees working for a convenience store averages only 2–3 at a time.
If the store is only managed manually, the cashier clerk is easy to create when customers come to buy large quantities of goods at the same time billing and customers have to wait in line, making customers frustrated and go away.
Not to mention, workers can also remember the incorrect price if they have to pay quickly. As a result, the store's business situation will be affected.
In addition to the variety of types, each product has a few different models and prices. For example, just one snack product has dozens of brands, such as O'Star, Poca, Oishi, Lay's, etc. And each brand offers a variety of snacks at different prices. If you sell a snack pack for 12,000 VND but mistakenly sell it for 6,000 VND, it is considered that you have lost all the profit from that snack pack.
How to make out bills quickly and not let customers wait for a long time?
Solution
Without a proper management system, your convenience store can easily become messy and suffer financial loss. Therefore, you need a more convenient store management solution like sales management software.
Along with owning sales software, you need to invest in a barcode scanner to get information and the product's price quickly.
Or you can still scan barcodes to pay and print invoices with a smartphone by entering SKU codes for products without barcodes, with product prices already stored in the software.
The total amount will also be calculated automatically, and a detailed invoice will be printed; you won't need to use a calculator to add and subtract and then write it down. Customers won't have to wait long, and you'll make more sales.
3. Liability Management
In one day, your convenience store sells a wide variety of items. The staff must record each item sold so that the manager can keep track of sales and merchandise sold daily.
However, manually recording and calculating the amount of money in and out takes a lot of time and makes customers wait while shopping. Managers cannot calculate profit and loss in business without a plan and method to manage revenue and expenditure.
In addition, settling payments with suppliers is another problem that requires a lot of effort from convenience store owners. When there is no management method, businesses easily mismanage, leading to financial loss.
Debt management with suppliers is a problem that any store could face
Solution
Currently, software's management of revenue and expenses is no longer strange to many store owners. Sales management software can provide features that include receivable management, cost management, receipts, sales reports, automatic calculation of end-of-day sales, etc.
These tools not only support managers in tracking and controlling revenue and expenditure but also save employees' effort and time.
4. Product Display Issues
If you do not know, the space and display of goods in a store significantly impact the shopping behavior of consumers. Especially for convenience store chains, consistency in presentation is important to create a professional feel and make a good impression on potential customers, who often choose convenience stores to buy from.
However, it will be very difficult for managers to go to many stores simultaneously to check and monitor the display without supporting tools.
How to check the consistency of product display in each store?
Solution
Grasping the need for consistent visual merchandising management at chain stores, some software providers have integrated essential features to support visual sales strategies.
In particular, FieldCheck is one of the ultimate convenience store solutions built on a digital checklist that helps in-store employees perform their tasks quickly and efficiently. At the same time, the manager can also detect errors immediately to make timely adjustments.
5. Slow Detection for Equipment Damage
Like the standard supervision of the display, managing equipment and facilities at convenience stores is difficult. According to regulations on occupational safety, machines and equipment must be stamped with safety inspection stamps before being put into use.
During the operation of a convenience store, the manager is responsible for carefully inspecting the facilities and the equipment to assess the condition of the store in order to make a temporary repair and schedule regular maintenance for equipment. Fast handling will help ensure people's and property's safety, reduce possible risks, and increase labor productivity.
Device and equipment management
Solution
Device management software can help businesses operate a full and ongoing maintenance process. At the same time, this solution can also help limit possible mistakes.
FieldCheck helps businesses track and report device health to meet all sizes and areas of business activities. The application is intelligently designed to optimize the operational performance of machines and equipment. The software allows you to create routine maintenance, repair, and replace spare parts when they are due.
6. Employee Performance Management
Even though they are small, convenience stores still manage complex and constantly changing workers. The convenience store environment has a reputation for being the most volatile because it's not a long-term career option for many workers.
Therefore, the supervision and management of sales staff requires managers to regularly monitor employees to grasp the working style and bad expressions to avoid unnecessary losses in the future. In addition, most convenience stores employ part-time workers, so they will have to work in shifts, half-shifts, or rotating shifts.
Suppose the staff management is not good. In that case, the store will easily encounter fraud, bad business performance, waste of human resources, and the risk of losing money to amend or fix the trouble.
Store staff performance management
Solution
Today, most of the convenience store management software on the market has features that help you control workers effectively, such as assigning tasks, arranging goods for storage, inventory control, distribution, cash register, etc.
In addition, the software helps support timekeeping, salary calculation, and employee productivity measurement through accurate statistics, even though a mini supermarket or convenience store has a similar system of workforce for complexity.
7. Customer Care Management
According to a survey on consumer buying habits, many customers buy goods at convenience stores because of the policy of accumulating points and discounts for members, besides other reasons such as a form of payment. Flexible math and modern space Convenience stores should maintain this policy to attract customers.
But to take good care of customers, it is necessary to have a system to store customer information. You will find it difficult to manage customer information and purchase histories by keeping them in the books.
See more: The Difference Between Customer Care And Customer Service
Customer care management
Solution
Some sales management software has launched its mobile application for customers buying goods at convenience stores to help store owners manage customers simply and without data entry. The system will save the customer's QR code when the customer logs into this application.
As a result, convenience store owners do not need to enter customer information to manage customers; instead, they scan the QR code on the customer's app.
If the customer does not bring a phone, the system can still read the phone number to the staff, and the information will be filled in on the invoice. The ability for customers to review invoices, manage to spend, and accumulate points when shopping on their app will be a huge plus for the amenity your convenience store brings to your customers.
